At this juncture of my life, I’ve seen too much stressful events to write them all down, but one incident happened which has seared into my psyche. The event left me unable to sleep for a week afterwards, and for the first time in my life, I began to see things crawling on the floor when the lights were turned off. No one having done more than 5 years in a closed security prison can claim complete soundness of mind, but until that moment, I could have said that almost 2 decades in prison didn’t impact me mentally as it should have.
3 gang members wanted to rob an unaffiliated guy (they call us civilians, don’t ask me why). One other gang member stood up with the potential victim, and a knife ensued. Everyone involved had knives which were over 7 inches long. Surprisingly, the 2 man team came out on top, but while the one was fighting against 2, one of the assailants got behind him, and began to drive the icepick like rod into the back of the nonaffiliated guy. I’m no biology major, but 7 inches driven into a man’s upper back leaves his lungs, liver, heart, and spine in jeopardy.
I spent a week on lock down unable to sleep because the images kept on playing in my head. I barely ate, didn’t turn off the lights because I saw things creeping on the cell floor. I hated myself for being so soft. Slowly, through prayer, and God’s guidance, I was able to regain my composure. I resented my cowardly response, but I recall the faces of other witnesses and saw the same look of shock in their faces.
As a reminder, I recalled 4 months prior to that, an older man in his 70’s, who’d done more than 30 years in prison came in the dorm badly shaken after watching an inmate get killed in front of him on the yard. He’d been around and seen hundreds of fights and scores of deadly encounters, yet he was shaken. I resolve to walk away when things turn potentially deadly and not allow my mental Memorex to record such ordeals.